Holmes: The real Mitt Romney

Tuesday

Nov 27, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 27, 2007 at 7:02 PM

Twenty years later, Willie Horton is back on the campaign trail.

Twenty years later, Willie Horton is back on the campaign trail.

Horton was the thug charged with a brutal rape while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison. He was the star of the notorious "revolving door" commercials that helped doom Michael Dukakis' White House bid.

This time around, the part of Horton is played by Daniel Tavares, who served 16 years in a Massachusetts prison for killing his mother, was released, and is now charged with murdering a young couple near Tacoma.

Mitt Romney is trying to avoid playing the part of Dukakis. Romney was no longer Massachusetts governor when a judge released Tavares on his own recognizance after a bail hearing last July, but he had appointed the judge.

Romney wasted no time distancing himself from Tavares, especially once Rudy Giuliani started bringing it up. Romney called on Judge Kathe Tuttman to resign over her lapse in "judgment." His response not only deflects blame, it scores points with Republican primary voters who think the only thing wrong with our criminal justice system is that it allows judges to sometimes get in the way of cops and prosecutors.

As a handful of Massachusetts lawyers and judges have tried to point out, there are questions of law and facts in this case as well as politics. Tavares had served his sentence under the kind of post-Horton tough-on-crime policy that offers little or no rehabilitation and provides for no post-release supervision. Just before his release, he was charged with assaulting prison guards in incidents 17 months and more than two years before.

The guards and the district attorney could have charged and tried Tavares while he was still in prison, in which case he wouldn't have been released and, if convicted, his new sentence would have been added on to his old, but they didn't. They could have asked for a dangerousness hearing and introduced evidence that would have forced higher bail or no bail at all, but they didn't.

The transcript of Tavares' bail hearing indicates there's more to the story. There was bad blood between Tavares and the guards; he had filed a suit against them, and their case against him was probably weak. But the judge was simply following the law, which says bail cannot be denied unless there's reason to believe the defendant won't return for his next hearing.

"A judge isn't a law enforcement agent," Ed Ryan, past president of the Mass. Bar Association, told me. "A judge is charged with applying the law to the facts of the case, and that's exactly what Judge Tuttman did."

Romney, who graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, could have explained that. He could say that a judge who fairly applies the law is no more responsible for the subsequent acts of a defendant than the governor who appointed her.

But those of us who have watched him operate in Massachusetts know Romney never lets facts or principles get in the way of what's best for Mitt. That meant throwing Tuttman, a respected lawyer and tough prosecutor, overboard. For what it's worth, excessive loyalty is not among Romney's faults.

Romney's criminal justice record should be a campaign issue, not because of Tavares' crimes, but because there's so little to it. As in so many other areas, Romney's achievements in four years as governor are embarrassingly slim. He did grab headlines at one point by appointing a blue-ribbon commission after guards stood idly by while a notorious pedophile priest was murdered in the same prison where Tavares served his time. Then he ignored the commission's wide-ranging reform proposals.

People in Massachusetts know Romney to be more of a showhorse than workhorse. That's why so many Bay State Republicans are supporting other candidates. That's why he didn't seek re-election to a second term: Everyone knew he'd lose.

Instead, he's running for president. Too bad Republicans in places like Iowa and South Carolina have been trained since well before Will Horton to pay no attention to anything Massachusetts voters have to say.

Rick Holmes is opinion editor for the MetroWest (Mass.) Daily News. He can be reached at rholmes@cnc.com.

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